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Rugged Individual Sociopaths

Imagine in a discussion about the sex abuse that goes on in Hollywood, someone said, regarding the victims of the abuse, “I guess I’m meant to cry tears of sympathy for all of these people who were molested. Somehow I just can’t muster a single tear. You made your choices. Nobody put a gun to your head.” That would no doubt elicit gasps and a good deal of the familiar point and sputter. If nothing else, people are expected to show a little empathy for the victims of predators, especially when it is kids or young adults.

Empathy is essential to a high-trust society. It allows people to cooperate, rather than spend their time defending themselves from others in society. Empathy allows people to engage with others, trusting that the other side is acting in good faith and not trying to cheat the other party. It makes it possible to engage in things like charity and social improvement. When you can put yourself in the mind of a person outside your kin-group, share their feelings about things, cooperative society is possible.

It’s why liars and cheaters can never be tolerated. Their actions put the trust of society into question, which means their lack of empathy costs everyone. In some respects, the lack of empathy is worse than the crime itself. A man who kills another man in a dispute, but feels remorse, can be rehabilitated. A man who steals from another man and is unable to understand why it is wrong or celebrates his act, can never be rehabilitated and can never be a part of society. He can never be trusted, because he lacks empathy.

This basic insight into the nature of society has been a central element of the Western Right since de Maistre. It was always the radical that imagined human society as based entirely on self-interest. Humans would either cooperate because it worked to their advantage or not cooperate because it was to their advantage. Humans were infinity selfish and altruism was just a consequence of society and culture. Therefore, set the conditions of society just right and people will cooperate with one another.

The Right has always rejected that, until recently. The quote at the start of this post is a variation of this tweet from Matt Walsh. He is, according to his handlers, “a writer, speaker, author, and one of the religious Right’s most influential young voices.” In addition to that, they claim “He is known for boldly tackling the tough subjects and speaking out on faith and culture in a way that connects with his generation and beyond.” In reality, he is reproducing official dogma for the Official Right, what remains of it.

What that tweet reveals is that Official Conservatism™ thinks it is perfectly fine for sophisticated parties to prey on unsophisticated parties. In his case, it suggests the religious Right would be OK with the strong preying on the weak, as in the example at the start of the post. After all, pederasty is by definition a crime because one party, the adult, is sophisticated, while the other party, the young person, is not. Therefore, it is assumed they cannot bargain in the sexual marketplace on fair and equal terms.

Now, there is nothing in the writing of Matt Walsh to suggest he is in favor of pederasty, but there is no reason to think he would oppose it. After all, if he is so utterly lacking in empathy that he cannot muster even a bit of sympathy for people saddled with egregious school debt, his fitness for society is in question. His brand of flamboyant sociopathy is what we would expect from a serial predator or maybe a banker. You have to wonder what is wrong with someone who is so proudly callous toward his fellow citizens.

This is exactly why Official Conservatism™ is headed for the dustbin of history. It no longer offers a philosophical alternative to radicalism. Instead, it embraces the same callous and materialist view of society as the radicals. It starts from the premise that we are just random strangers flung together by serendipity, ruthlessly trying to advance our self-interest. The only difference between the radical and the so-called conservative is the former still thinks this can be remedied, while the latter embraces it.

A civil society is one in which the individuals naturally balance their interests against the interests of the whole. Popular government assumes this to be true. The people will debate and persuade one another about the proper balance. A democratic society composed of sociopaths quickly descends into gang warfare, where ever-shifting alliances of individuals makes war upon one another in a zero-sum game, ruthlessly exploiting the available resources. That’s a prison yard, not a high-trust society.

That’s why people with a soul should look at the student debt problem with sympathy and horror. It’s not just that these kids are saddled with debt. It’s that they and their parents are being preyed upon by sophisticated parties, with the aid and protection of the state. It is a form of economic piracy, in which the crown is quietly supporting the pirates, at the expense of the people’s commerce. Conservatives have always rejected this. Christians have always rejected this. Today, the “religious right” embraces it.

This inability to comprehend the basic building blocks of Western society is also why they cannot understand how open borders are a disaster. For someone like Matt Walsh, people are interchangeable, not only with one another, but with other economic units. In the materialist world view, social capital matters only in that it can be exploited for economic gain. In the zero-trust, Hobbesian world of the modern conservative, the greater the diversity, the greater the openness, which makes exploitation easier.

Authentic conservatism has always understood that Western society is built on trust and trust comes naturally to the familiar. Our greatest natural empathy is toward our family and then our kin group. From there is extends, but weakens, to those who look and sound like our kin. It breaks down entirely when it reaches those who are alien in appearance, speech, and custom. Therefore, high-trust societies can only exist in societies with a shared heritage and a shared biology. Diversity and trust are mutually exclusive.

The lesson of the last recession was that a surprising number of people managed to keep making payments on underwater mortgages. So it might be with student debt as well. The power of FIRE in our society is immense, and they make up a considerable part of the donor class. For Example: Singer, Paul

Any time money changes hands, there is a profit opportunity. I know of a firm that made a lot of money off distressed property. I’m not at liberty to say much about it, but their strategy was to solicit banks for unproductive mortgages. They would buy a tranche, expedite the foreclosure process and then quickly flip the properties. They were expert at picking from the tranche the properties they could quickly flip. The rest they would push along to others with a different angle. This is not new. The scale is new, but the process is not. I’ve said for… Read more »

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7 months ago

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DLS

If you have ever worked at a bank or participated in a short sale, you know how truly awful banks are at the foreclosure process. The government creates some of their problems, but their own incompetency is baffling.

Yup. It can look that way to those not directly involved. The thing is, a “bank” (like every other corporate entity) is not a unitary actor. It is a bunch of individuals acting each within his or her own incentive structure. This works pretty well when there is money to be made. The bonus/promotion process is simple and clear. Not so for loss minimization. Everyone just tends to run for the hills and minimum effort is applied. The only effective way within the organization to minimize loss is to write the loan down to zero and credit a separate loss… Read more »

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7 months ago

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DLS

I agree. Banks are really in the loan origination business, and would drift pretty far afield if they dealt with rehabs and contractors. Plus, the regulatory burden ads risks to everything they do.

The housing crisis was immensely profitable for me. That kind of thing happens when you’re not being foolish while everyone else is. I can empathize with the people who lost their homes — some were legitimately hoodwinked, just not smart enough to understand what they were getting into. Others were just following the herd. But I am also not ashamed of profiting.

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7 months ago

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Calsdad

I know people who were just downright stupid – and that’s why they lost money during the housing crisis. They saw the market value of their home go down, so their feeble brain said ” this house isn’t worth as much any more – why am I going to continue to pay a mortgage on it” – and so they stopped. I know of a couple of cases where they literally stripped the house to the bones for the copper pipes and wire – before running away from the home. Forget about the fact that you have to live somewhere.… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Aod

I bought my house with a large down payment when things had pretty much bottomed out, 2011. It’s now appraised at 100 granda’ more than what I had paid for it. I can’t honestly say I knew exactly what I was doing but I was frugal enough to have profited nonetheless.

If you scroll through all of the comments in this post or if you occasionally scroll through the all the comments in other posts you will realize that most of our problems can be traced back to the destruction of the tangible and intangible commons. We can pass laws, increase/decrease funding here and there, isolate this and that and on and on, all or it a waste of time. Fixing problems one at a time (in our present state) is as futile as shoveling against the tide. If we don’t do something about the commons first – any policy wizardry… Read more »

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7 months ago

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pyrrhus

Unfortunately, the only group of people who seem to recognize a duty toward the common man are whites, much to their disadvantage, while the (((predators))) and minorities are happy to loot society.

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7 months ago

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UpYours

Right so Bernard Ebbers, Dennis Kozlowski, Dick Fuld, Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Kenneth Lay etc. recognized a duty to their common man? LOL. YT Boomer males are some of the most pathological selfish pricks I have met. They took the treasure bequeathed to them by prior generations and fucked it good, in just 30 odd years.

But hey, the alt-right has no platform beyond race, race and darkies be bad, darkies be bad, so cannot expect any critical self reflection from your kind

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7 months ago

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Lugh

Join the discussion…He didn’t say Whites were perfect as a Race. Shame on you.

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7 months ago

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Primi Pilus

sorry …. What is “YT”?

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7 months ago

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Nunnya Bidnez, jr.

yt = whitey

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7 months ago

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DLS

The college debt bubble was created by government taxpayer subsidies, which colleges are all too happy to waste on cathedrals and bureaucrats. The only solution is to make the colleges responsible for loan defaults. Rather than selling degrees that will never pay for themselves, they would have a vested interest in the return on investment of their students. Even for STEM degrees, most of the curriculum could be replaced with a reading list of a few dozen books and independent study. At best, 25% of what you get from college is a good investment. The rest is a very expensive… Read more »

I think the optimum solution is to get the state out of the student loan business. There’s nothing wrong with borrowing for education and training. The debt should be subject to normal bankruptcy rules and the lenders should have full discretion with regards to their lending. Colleges would suddenly shrink by 50%, which is why no one will willing to face this option. An alternative would be to publish a debt scale by area of study. Then ten year market rate for chemists is known to a usable degree. The maximum debt load for chemistry majors could therefore be established… Read more »

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7 months ago

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George Orwell

“Someone majoring in folklore may think they can get top dollar in the folklore business, but current numbers suggest their market is close to zero.”

A xirl recently laid-off from HuffPo’s now defunct opinion board tweeted her “credentials” as some kind of chest-puffing bleat. She tweeted “If you’re in the market for an opinion editor with a huge and diverse rolodex, or a columnist with 10 years of writing about gender politics (and a literal PhD in romantic comedies) under her belt, talk to me.” Literally.

In 2005, the banksters got the GOP Congress and Bush to make it nearly impossible to discharge student debt during bankruptcy. That made both banks and schools even more irresponsible in matriculating students who never should have been in college, getting degrees in absurd majors. The law was one reason among many voters kicked Republicans out of their majority in 2006, and out of the White House in 2008. The courts may be easing the 2005 law: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2018/06/18/bankruptcy-student-loans/#3999c81e44f8

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

In fact, it was the Clintons who made student loans non-dischargeable in bankruptcy proceedings.

“I would be in favor of getting the banks out of the loan business entirely.” I’m assuming you mean student loans, otherwise we’ll have to revert to a cash-and-carry economy. Which would not necessarily be a totally bad thing, except that the transition would be financially catastrophic to the majority, and both organized crime and the existing usury industry would certainly seek to fill the void (the ~50% reduction in higher education institutions would be a huge benefit for a number of reasons). A more reasonable approach would be to phase in the elimination of all support for borrowing, say,… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

The greatest thing that could happen would be separation of school and state. How did it happen that a once-free people consented to turn their children over to the states to have their minds trained? “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

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7 months ago

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Matrix

Company’s are grabbing the two year trades right out of school before they are finished in my area. The word is finally getting out to a lot of my students. Many parents and students are not told of these incredible opportunities to get out and be productive right out of the gate.

Nephew getting ready to graduate HS, and finish his study to be a car mechanic. His is currently in vocational school. Local dealership has already hired him and is paying for his couple years of additional training.

Good solution. Your recommendation would certainly destroy the worthless, fourth rate “university” in my town. It’s basically a holding pen for mediocrities who don’t want to get vocational training.

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7 months ago

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Larkin Lover

This has all been discussed by Steve sailer and Derbyshire types at length, but the student loan racket and debt inflation have their roots in the disparate impact case of 1971. The other laughable detail is that the educational loans now have a mandatory 5% interest rate. That was established recently, like in the last 10 years. They pay us nothing on our money, but the government has arbitrarily ruled that we must pay IT a real interest rate! I have a considerable debt burden from professional school, but I was able to lock in a very low interest rate… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Larkin Lover

And you can’t default from it with bankruptcy. That may be one of the forces fueling the opioid crisis

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7 months ago

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The Old Guide

No bank would ever loan money to a student majoring in sociology or music appreciation. Have you ever seem a want ad for a sociologist or music appreciator? There is no way that a graduate with such majors will earn money based on those degrees. The student has been suckered into signing his life away to the music department at a pubic college already subsidized by taxpayers.

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7 months ago

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Compsci

DLS, agree mostly, but you lost me at STEM alternative of “reading list” and “independent study”. Nothing could be further from the truth. One should always read, and read a lot. Granted. But lab work and hands on is not done “independently” in major scientific fields. Simply not safe nor possible. Perhaps you are thinking more along the lines of a work study situation? A popular and highly rated University, Kettering, does this. All students enrolled spend half year in formal classes, and a half year “on the job” with a major corporation. This goes on through your time there… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Dutch

My daughter did the STEM thing, microbiology. While others drilled through the comprehensive book work, she got through all of that and immersed herself in lab work. She knows all the procedures down cold, the how, the why, and how it all goes together. What that sort of work is capable of accomplishing, and how it can be used to confirm and expand on new knowledge and theory. Right out of college, the biomedical industry actively recruited her, and she is a 23 year old with a tremendous career path already started. She will likely be involved in some fantastic… Read more »

What is up with you cucks coming in dissident right blogs to brag about your utter failure as a father? Bragging about what a good progressive dad you are? SMFH. Go back to conservative treehouse if you want a crowd of cuck progressives to clap at your bad parenting and ruined daughter.

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Daniel, are you referring to Dutch’s post? If so, read again. It is a success story, not one of parenting failure.

I don’t like Daniel’s tone, but where I think he is coming from is that putting a bright, personable young woman on a successful career path is actually a failure, civilizationally speaking. 18-28 is prime child-bearing and child-raising years for young women. Encouraging them to go off and start a career is exactly the wrong thing to do. They turn into the career girl who marries late, and has one child, late, if at all. What this does, is make the best, brightest women the least productive in the gene pool. Truly, a really smart girl with a lot going… Read more »

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7 months ago

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JZs

I’m old enough to remember when raising children was the epitome of womanhood. Oh for the status quo ante.

If you told me that your lovely daughter just got married to a nice 30 year old in a great career and was about to birth your first grandchild I’d call that a success story.

Sending your daughter off to college to be used by many fly by men during her prime is not exactly what I’d call K behavior. Hopefully she will be able to land a good husband, who is willing to pay off her debt while she mothers the next generation. But your “success” story has made this less likely, not more.

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7 months ago

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Educated.Redneck

Something about her getting Bernankified or such… But in all seriousness, and from personal experience, Daniel is right. Even for us persons-of-peni$, getting on the corporate hampster wheel is a soul-killer. The financial benefit these days is emphemeral as well – it isn’t compared to a hampster wheel for nothin’. For women, it’s a double whammy – crushing the soul and excising the natural, healthy desire & ability to have a family in a greedy, unheeding pursuit of money. You are essentially saying “My daughter, my flesh and blood, is off sacrificing her mental, and financial well-being and her familial… Read more »

I waited for the dust to settle on all of this before I commented again. She would easily go for the family and white picket fence thing (as her Mom did). But actually finding a good mate is hard. She is tall and blonde and got her mom’s looks, and is very self assured, along with the social awkwardness that often comes from being super-bright. The men she meets are either soy-boys, which she rejects outright, or they go the rude and bluster route, which she ain’t gonna put up with. On top of all of that, she is from… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Ursula

Thank you for being such a great father, Dutch. You, Saml Adams, Teapartydoc, Al from da Nort, Vizzini and others — outstanding fathers. You don’t know how reassuring it is to know you exist and are blessing our society with your excellent brains and values. God bless you and yours, gentlemen! Here’s hoping your daughter is blessed with a worthy husband, Dutch, which leads to beautiful, smart children.

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7 months ago

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DLS

Compsci, included in my rough estimate are all the non-core classes you must take in 4 years, plus the softer core coursework. For STEM degrees (I would also add business and medical), you still have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for courses in literature, philosophy, history, etc. I am not saying they’re not interesting, but just that the return on investment is very low, and most professors just follow the books. I have an MBA and CPA, but a significant portion of even my business coursework was fluff. For science degrees, the return on investment might be higher,… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Compsci

DLS, agreed. Note later on in comments I’ve referred to the typical BA/BS time of 3 years for European advanced education. Indeed, this was sometimes problematic for such students entering graduate school in the US.

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

And the culture? Western civilization? What of that?

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7 months ago

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DLS

MRV, it’s very valuable to study and learn those things, but you don’t need to pay a liberal college thousands of dollars to have a lefty professor read the textbook to you.

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7 months ago

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Dutch

Lab tech is an interesting career path for women. They can take gigs for six months, a year, or a couple of years at a time. Good pay, good work. It is a bit of a closed community, and people know who each other are. If you are good at your work, you can get hired immediately. (Most people are not good at their work, or have the outside-of-work emotional or other things going on that wreck their work life). Women will take short gigs when the kids go to school, or go away to college. The Western Civ thing… Read more »

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7 months ago

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pdxr13

Companies are not allowed to screen applicants for ability or IQ beyond very narrow things like “lift 50 pounds to shoulder height from floor 6 times in 3 minutes” and even those filters will be protested by the weak and broken as needing an ADA or racial concession. This is where Union Apprenticing and Journeymen programs are the filter of much post-1965 cultural baggage. No longer can you hire a bright young man for the mail room and see how he does, then knowing that he is on-time, clean, strong and a self-starter, get him trained for a productive and… Read more »

Most people forget that college really ISN’T about getting a job in the future. The colleges themselves have pushed this lie because it’s profitable for them, and corporations have gone along with this lie because they’re equally plugged into the cathedral.

College is a tool for professors to find students to expand on their theories and their field. It’s how the priesthood of academia perpetuates itself.

The fact that so few people go into graduate school or even publish their papers is a sign of how far gone academia is. Power really does corrupt.

They should be held partly to account for loan defaults, but not entirely. That would shift the responsibility too far in the other direction. Like a parent who co-signs a loan, the schools should be co-signing for a % of the loan. The student/borrower should still hold the majority stake.

Can confirm. Got in to a conversation with a guy who was all, “Quit blaming society for personal moral faults of people who won’t study, stay off opiates, etc.” It was impossible for this dude to comprehend the idea that a society where this sort of bad outcome is common is not as good as a society where this result was not common; not if that would imply any reduction in what he thought of as his fundamental right to buy cheap Chinese t-shirts, or whatever. Live your own life, nobody is responsible for you except you. All that. It’s… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Mcleod

Empathy without logic is what is destroying Western Civilization. Provide housing, education, medical care, food, and a cell phone to women that procreated with the wrong men and you will create more people to provide for. Provide funds for worthless degrees to smug self-important douche canoes, and you will get more smug self-important douche canoes. Feed the overpopulated starving in some third world shit hole and you get more starving third world shit holes. All in the name of “what would Jesus do?”.

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7 months ago

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DLS

It’s a great and noble thing to personally answer the question of “what would Jesus do.” The problem is when one is forced at gunpoint to pay for someone else’s answer.

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7 months ago

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Mcleod

My response has always been that I have no idea what Jesus would do, but I know he would tear up a bank lobby and whip the shit out of some bankers.

Charity begins at home and ends there. Everything else is some version of feeding the bears.

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7 months ago

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A.B. Prosper

You are kind of missing the point of an article. Its all a balancing act. If too many people are disenfranchised from society, they no longer are obliged to support that society or its norms. So sure, the social contract says “you need to work for a living” the same contract says “there needs to be jobs” and when society can’t provide enough work for people to get by and they make a real effort to do so, you have a problem . And we have such a problem , the US fertility rate per child bearing age woman is… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Sam J.

“…Its all a balancing act. If too many people are disenfranchised from society, they no longer are obliged to support that society or its norms…”

” […] Feed the overpopulated starving in some third world shit hole and you get more starving third world shit holes. ”

Ah, actually, you get starving third-world shithole denizens HERE. Or in France. Anyway, someplace that’s WAY too good for them.

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7 months ago

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Drake

I look at the “student debt problem” with mixed feelings. I feel empathy for the first few geezers who got on the internet and wired their savings to a Nigerian Prince. I feel for the students a couple of decades ago who thought $200k in debt for a humanities degree from a mid-tier private college was a good investment. Anyone doing either of those things today is a sucker. My son is a senior in high school and most of his classmates have plans to avoid that kind of debt – live at home and attend community or nearby state… Read more »

That’s great, but the defect comes when trying to scale that up. It becomes dog-eat-dog. Yes, as a society we should encourage individuals to act prudently. We should also collectively guard against predators, who seek to exploit our virtues. When school debt is well over a trillion dollars, simply blaming the debtors is just an excuse for not addressing the issue. We have to ask ourselves if it is just to have a system that requires kids and their parents to treat the education system as a gauntlet operated by bandits, grifters and assassins. Frankly, what’s the point of government… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Mcleod

We aren’t allowed to collectively guard against predators. Make a home loan based on the ability of the home buyer to repay the loan? Dats racist. Provide student loans to those with the academic ability to succeed in a career that would allow the student to repay the loan? Again, dats racist. The banks don’t care because they will sell the shitty loans to the government, and the universities don’t care because they got their money. What’s the point of government? Are these institutions committing fraud? If they are committing fraud, then, I agree, the government should step in and… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Drake

40 years ago, the government didn’t much interfere in the bank loan process. They let the bankers figure out risks and price their loans accordingly. When they made mistakes, the bank took it’s lumps.

Now the loan process is more about government compliance than risk assessment. The loans get sold off and / or guaranteed by Uncle Sam. It’s a system built for scams and political games. in case you thought it was going to get fixed – Maxine Waters now chairs the House Financial Services Committee.

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7 months ago

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Dutch

Drake, the Federal Reserve Board converted the banking industry from an entrepreneurial process to a guild. Now the government and the banking system are each other’s handmaidens. Credit unions are the banks of old.

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

” […] I think we should just end the exemption from bankruptcy carve out for student loans and call it a day.”

Right you are. But the people who own the gov’t will *never* allow that, so it’s really a non-starter.

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7 months ago

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Drake

A first step would be not letting our federal government underwrite the scam.

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7 months ago

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Dutch

Drake, you nailed it. Most selfless and “public good” things work fine at the micro level, but they rarely, if ever scale up well. Government is the essence of scaling up social policy, and the top-down structure of government simply facilitates a huge “skim” for the government perps, over and over again.

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

“A first step would be not letting our federal government underwrite the scam.”

An impossible step, though, since the owners of the gov’t will *never* allow that. Never.

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7 months ago

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Compsci

It might be of use here to remind folk that we are talking of two different sources of debt: public institutions and for profit institutions. Last I saw the figure, the student debt bubble was $1.2T and might now be $1.4T. It is bigger than the housing bubble ever was. But I’ve also read that the percentage of the debt from for profit instituions, e.g., ABC College of Cosmotolgy, was more than half. I’ve not confirmed this, but would assume such students are least capable of understanding the ramifications of taking on loan debt and the benefits of their “degree”… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Calsdad

Why is there a problem ” scaling that up” ? Sounds like you’re against common sense and responsible behavior for the masses. College didn’t used to be something everybody had to attend – just to get a job. Somewhere along the line – it became a “you have to go to college or it’s like admitting that you’re stupid” type of deal. And then the lefties got hold of the whole thing and started putting in quotas for diversity attendance, and the feminists started convincing all the females that unless they attended they’d spend their lives at the mercy of… Read more »

Great you pulled yourself up by your bootstraps. So did I. But if we keep imprisoning a large chunk of the population who can’t do this then they are going to vote in a communist who will totally destroy the economy.

I know you really want to feel special and let everyone else know how much better than them you are. But I’d prefer a functioning society for my grandchildren. Even if that means you can’t stick it to all the people who made worse decisions than you. Or I for that matter.

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7 months ago

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Calsdad

Where did I say imprison? All putting people in prison does – is increase the tax bite yet again for all of us who pay our damn bills. Prison also doesn’t seem to “fix” a thing in regards to criminal behavior – other than the fact that it gets the people off the street. It’s apparently debateable – but I have seen some analysis that point out that the large US prison population DOES keep the crime rate down. And in case you haven’t looked around – they’re going to vote in commies anyway. Occasional Kotex and Elizabeth Warren are… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

^^This^^ Oh, Lordy, THIS^^.

Your next assignment, should you decide to accept it, is to explain the miracle of universal suffrage.

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7 months ago

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Alex

College became necessary for the vast administrative apparatus when it became illegal to administer IQ tests during the hiring process because ‘dats raycess…’
College became a parametric for intelligence, which were now discovering isn’t so.

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7 months ago

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Larkin Lover

Yeah that’s what I said above in more epic form. Social structure is basically the same, only with massive inefficiencies built in.

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7 months ago

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Larkin Lover

I’ve said this before, so it may be tiresome. Back in our parents’ day, they would give these general knowledge tests to determine hiring for jobs. Basically iq testing. Certain groups did not do well and there was a big federal court case back in 1971 where they outlawed testing for jobs. Employers had to go by credentials such as college degree. So college became like high school in value. And it has taken 30 years to show that in fact the college system yields a similar result, but at what cost and inefficiency. I tell you THEY have cost… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

“[…] Seriously: If you’re not smart enough to evaluate whether or not $200k in debt for a degree in Oriental Lesbian Literature in the 12th Century is a wise investment – you have no business going to something that describes itself as an “institution of higher learning” […]

Two words: THE PARENTS.

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7 months ago

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George Orwell

“Official Conservatism™ thinks it is perfectly fine for sophisticated parties to prey on unsophisticated parties”

There are no more sophisticated parties on land or sea than the parties on the SS Bill Kristol.

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7 months ago

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steveaz

RE Student loans: what if all parties to this racket are preying on each other, with a bare subsidy from the tax payers, who also expect to ‘get’ some pound of flesh from the transaction, too? The buffet on hand at this all-you-can-eat feeding frenzy is the doughy Sallie-Mae-sanctioned diet of high-carb non-profit bookkeeping, lo-fat status-anxious parents’ early disposal of their heirs’ inheritances, cold Bulghur porridge made organically from sustainably-harvested urban fads, and, the finale, spicy-hot “woke” activists paid eventually from the taxpayer’s pockets. Toss back a couple of tequila shots some night with one of these indebted students, and… Read more »

With thinking like this we’ll have our new socialist president in no time. Gee I wonder why you cons always lose? “Vote for us we will ensure you are a debt slave based on decisions you made as a teenager, that we encouraged, forever!”

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

@Daniel Millet, yes absolutely, aces. While you’re there everyone encourages you that you made the right decision. Ten years ago you were told that you might not make as much initially as an engineer, but that your degree would still get you some value. You’re 18, you don’t know any better. Hyperbole for effect, boomer fat cats that paid a tenth of the cost for their degree, blew off five years in a love cult and then turned around to make decent money and own a home by 30 are dead set on making sure that bankers get their money… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Boomer “fat-cat” here. When I went to University, the tuition cost was less than a couple hundred $$$ a semester. Housing, the same. Most everyone was working their way through the University on part-time min wage jobs, This was a top 20 public University. What happened? Well, I’m not sure, but I bet we can trace it to the Fed’s getting into the loan business and the incessant cry for everyone to attend college and the assumption we are all college material. But regardless, nothing I ever did to my recollection blew the lid off of a college education, nor… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

Good reply, hence the hyperbole, but we’re also conflating two things, what to do with young ‘uns now and what do we do with the ship that’s sailed. I’m just confident it’s not “fuck ’em”.

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7 months ago

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pdxr13

The young people need to be working, forming families, and be able to save a little after non-luxury adequacies. How that is accounted for should not be a skimming operation for financial wizards.

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Hoyos, working my way back from new to old posts, I think I responded. We will forgive the current debts, not possible not to. A Jubilee of sorts, but probably under a guise to lend cover to the Pol’s. What we need to work on is the pernicious concept of free University for all. That is totally unsustainable. After all, if it were, all the current crop of debt holders would have graduated and found employment to cover their debt and still provide a reasonable lifestyle. But they have not. Passing that debt to the public trough will not change… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

” […] what to do with young ‘uns now and what do we do with the ship that’s sailed. I’m just confident it’s not “fuck ’em”.”

Their PARENTS (remember those??) are responsible.

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7 months ago

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pdxr13

In the mid-1980’s, my paycheck working as a clerk in Safeway or McDonald’s was sufficient to pay my semester tuition and buy used books in Seattle. Add mowing lawns (pre-1986 illegal alien amnesty) and I was doing fine with time to keep up on reading. Neither of these angles pay enough to be reasonably couch-surfing in an Oregon I-5 metro now, let alone loan-free actual-education.

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

Wow. What a powerful argument: utter the magical word “boomer” and you win!

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

Could always read the whole comment and think about it, but snark is good too.

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Daniel, yes. But a vote for the other side means that more folk who can not make use of, or can not even complete an advanced degree get to play student for another few years on my dime?

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7 months ago

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A.B. Prosper

Oh fucking well. We don’t have jobs enough for everybody now and if it wasn’t for make work and welfare it would be even worse. If you want to fix this, you’ll have to close the borders to a lot of trade and repatriate a lot of people. Wages must go up and jobs must be ready so that young people can start families., After this you prefer automation, fine. You will get Socialism. Ideally we would be able to have a system in which young men from 16-18 or so could start work and trades and support a non… Read more »

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7 months ago

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A.B. Prosper

Spot on. Every job replaced by a kiosk is a vote for a Communist.

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

And where did these “teenagers” come from?? Do teenagers nowadays not have something called “parents”? Do they arrive in the world as autonomous economic units nowadays or something?

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7 months ago

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A.B. Prosper

A society in which the family is the main and only unit of support is a tribal or clan society? Is that what people want Society in the broader sense must have reciprocal obligations with its members or it serves no purpose In a society where wage labor and economies of scale are desired, this means jobs Parents have work to do there too of course, education and support and all that and some are derelict. However broadly if there aren’t jobs their aren’t businesses either Now we certainly could move to a tribal system where what your tribe owns… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Problem again is our national ideology of equality. If we were to accept the reality of human potential differences wrt educational attainment and value of that attainment, we might select the small subset of individuals (at most 15-20% of the population) that could make good use of a college education in a rigorous field of study (STEM for example). The reduced student load, and the corresponding reduced infrastructure would allow the government to pick up the cost to educate these folk. This is not unlike many European countries, which also provide a bachelors in *3* years, not 4, 5, even… Read more »

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7 months ago

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BadThinker

The average college student is not the woke Hillary supporter. The average college student has been sold a bill of goods by everyone who is supposed to advise them (their teachers, their parents, their *nation*). Grifters at Cashgrab U (both forprofit and nonprofit) tell them to sign on the dotted line, everything will be fine they’ll get a great job! “Oh, you made a choice to buy the tainted beef laced with cyanide, you should be a better consumer!” is what modern Conservative Inc. is saying here. Oh, and those great jobs? Well we kind of need to hire H-1Bs… Read more »

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7 months ago

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steveaz

Basically, its stupid: going into debt to buy a non-transferable asset of questionable value. At least with a car loan, you can sell the item, transfer title to the new owner, and use the proceeds to pay off the loan principle. I think it’s the loan officers, the people who sign-up those bewildered Freshmen for the debt of their lives, who are the truly evil ones. They couldn’t give a flying-F what happens to the debtor afterwards. They know the score, and can lean on the Nuremberg Defense and established confidentiality statutes for protection should an audit arise. Many are… Read more »

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7 months ago

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pdxr13

The lender who depends on a Social “Science” student borrower paying off the loan on-time and in-full at a 5% rate in a 0% environment deserves to lose principle. Default will clear these markets.

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7 months ago

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Mysteerious Rooshian Vooman

It does seem unfortunate, doesn’t it, that the indebted-graduate Hillary voter doesn’t know that it was the Clintons who made student debt non-dischargeable in a bankruptcy petition! O ye household gods of mine!

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

Serious question, wasn’t that the Bush administration?

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7 months ago

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Vegetius

Which came first, the sociopath or the libertarian?

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7 months ago

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Drake

Well… a libertarian isn’t going to give you a government-backed loan, or forgive you college loans. They aren’t going to buy you a gun, or try to take your guns away. You can hate them, but at least they generally believe in leaving you the hell alone.

Every Dem running for President seems determined to start a civil war by not leaving me alone.

They’ll just tell you that it’s totally fine for someone else to sell crack to your children so long as they don’t violate the NAP. But it’s totally not OK for you to go out with a gun and shoot the person trying to sell crack to your children, cause my non aggression principle.

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7 months ago

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Drake

Not here to defend libertarian purists – they are just well down on my hate list.

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7 months ago

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Guzalot

Daniel, selling crack to children IS a violation of the NAP.

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7 months ago

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A.B. Prosper

Many Libertarians disagree depending on what age they feel a person can have informed consent

Selling crack period is wrong anyway. Its unethical to sell drugs you know will result in a dangerous addiction for nearly all uses , our society making an exception for tobacco as its behavioral changes are mostly positive

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7 months ago

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A.B. Prosper

The Democrats are driven by a strong religious like ideology and no offense here and have the common sense notion that the Right won’t rebel

I’m fairly certain the same Libertarian thinking that infects the Right makes it a throughtcrime to cooperate for the greater good and the D’s know this

War especially a civil one is a collective effort.

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Come on now. Libertarians are not sociopaths and you know it. They are ideologues—and in that way not all that different from many who post here. We all have certain proclivities in certain beliefs. Example, most all here I suspect believe human nature flows down stream from biology. Lib’s simply do not understand this and are unable to adjust their theory of human interaction. But that does not imply sociopathy.

Years ago after falling into libertardian circles I started reading and researching more about it. During this time I read von Mises enormous tome Human Action, twice. I came to believe that the source of the problem for libertarians is the belief that human action stems from a profit motive, and profit is not a zero sum game. Human action does not stem from a profit motive, it stems from a status motive. And status is absolutely a zero sum game. If you have more status, then you will be higher status than I, and vice versa. This is where… Read more »

No prob. It’s been a few years since I read Human Action and tried to engage with the libertarians regarding what I consider to be a fundamental flaw in the very basics of their theory of human actions. I thought it through quite a bit and reached a lot of my own conclusions. The other part of their failed theory is understanding that at a deep primal level women are and always will be property. Reproductive property. We can certainly, and a great many fathers have, allowed women to sell their own reproductive property. But by claiming women’s reproductive ability… Read more »

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7 months ago

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A.B. Prosper

They might not actually be sociopaths in the clinical sense but they are so detached from human nature and so selfish they might as well be.

Its not a surprise that the Satanic Bible was cribbed from Ayn Rand . Its the same ethos

Humans are collective and tribal organisms not individualistic for the most part

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7 months ago

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Hoagie

The sociotarian.

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7 months ago

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Vegetius

Parasite Tribes. Rootless Cosmopolitans. Now we can add “Sophisticated Parties.”

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7 months ago

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pdxr13

So many metaphors for the same kind of bad people. Thank you for adding to the Modern Lexicon Decoder.

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7 months ago

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wiseguy

Matt Walsh was writing Kristol-tier outrageous takes in the run-up to the 2016 election. I’m having trouble finding links to them now, but to say that he went full retard is an understatement.

Some may have forgotten those screeds since he has been writing sane stuff more recently, but the usury defending might serve as a reminder as to who he really is.

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7 months ago

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Citizen of a Silly Country

Both the left and the right are taking advantage of the legacy social capital of American whites. The multi-culti left uses our trust to import millions upon millions of non-whites to gain control of the government, which will then be use to dispossess our people. The corporate right uses the trust of less-educated whites to swindle them out every dime – and futures dimes via debt – they they have. NW Europeans have been bred to trust non-kin and trust authority. Hard to fight evolution. I suspect that a serious culling of the herd will hit Europeans and European Americans.… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Apex Predator

“I suspect that a serious culling of the herd will hit Europeans and European Americans. If we survive, we’ll be a fairly different people after the great culling, a much more tribal people.” Truth, but what is even more true is that if we ever hit this level of culling IQ and innovation still win the day. Which means what? The orc hordes will all be culled as well en masse. Even right now it is clearly obvious to anyone with eyes and a room temp IQ these people couldn’t survive more than a few weeks w/o the gibs extracted… Read more »

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7 months ago

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pdxr13

Without the Gibs, Team Orc is not going to sit down and starve. They will fight, and burn. That is “when”.
In PA fiction, how come the special people stay in their cities with the power/water/gas/internet on? Job One is to make them feel the siege of Sarejavo, the comradeship of Rwandan Hutu-Tutsi and some weakness from not eating recently. These things bring sincere negotiation, and a new Deal.

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7 months ago

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Wolf Barney

Northern Europeans are the highest-trusting people, which results in communities where people leave their doors unlocked, do business on a handshake, let their kids play outside all day, robust civic participation, etc. But there’s a downside to high-trust. That evolved trait has been honed to such a high degree, that we, as a group, trust that others throughout the world are just like us, and of course we should allow clannish, low-trust groups to enter our society in great numbers because we have such great empathy toward others. It’s almost like it was an insidious plan by someone who figured… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Matrix

Loved the movies when I was a kid when deals were made on a handshake and both parties could be trusted. Was watching an old rerun of Gunsmoke the other day and was struck by the rugged individualism of Matt Dillon. The first scene is Matt gunning down a bad-guy, but the dude was always empathetic to the towns-people that were struggling to make ends meet. Perfect balance of social interest towards others while hang’em high to the evil bad guys.

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7 months ago

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BadThinker

(((someone)))

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7 months ago

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Chief

“Insidious”, to put it mildly, Wolf.

I think it started waaayyyy back in the early or mid ’80’s. I remember the first time I was asked to “press one for English” and thinking “Spanish? Why not Polish or German or Italian”?

Of course, now we know why. They were just softening the ground for the real diversity shtstorm they had planned for us.

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7 months ago

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Brain Surgeon

Great essay Z. As long as members of our side continue to celebrate and prefer to celebrate the bad outcomes of people who have less natural talent and/or made worse/different decisions than they themselves did we will never have the moral authority to lead and we will certainly never attract the amount of support needed to make a difference. People with social and economic problems aren’t impressed by smug, self righteous assholes who think themselves so much smarter.

Many white people with social and economic problems got that way by buying off on the rotten culture they were fed by the media. In my own generation I can name names among people I grew up with, and see with my own eyes the horror of their grandchildren. Who to blame? The media or the damned fool who absorbed the propaganda? Or do we blame DNA and the lack of IQ, the dearth of willpower to resist? In the end, does it matter? These are now throwaway humans who cannot help us move forward, who cannot be relied upon… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Jrod

More about empathy, a quote from an Execupudit post today: If you ever want to be reminded of why a majority of Britons voted for Brexit, consider two French elitist reactions quoted by Mr. Guilluy: Businessman and political adviser Alan Minc claimed that Brexit “was the victory of uneducated people over educated people.” The philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, meanwhile, saw it as the “victory of the little over the great, of stupidity over the mind.” There is not the slightest empathy or generosity in those responses. Not a flicker of interest in why people would feel so fed-up with the European… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Primi Pilus

Quotes that put me to mind that we need to act rapidly, decisively and without remorse to save our own civilization ……

I had a dog in this fight once. Matt is absolutely right. 18 rear olds are adults, Z. Everyone and his dog have been screaming at the kids about fake degrees in the liberal arts and humanities for over a decade now. CaptainCapitalism makes a living at it. Most schools force kids to do career studies. The ones signing up for fake education know exactly what they’re doing. They are going to party on and grow up later. They cannot claim they are victims gulled by predators. I screamed bloody murder at my kid when she dropped the sciences to… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

Dude, no. It’s not “paying your bills” it’s six figure usury after they’ve been yelled at for 12 years of education “you CAN’T get ANYWHERE without a college degree!” You’re also paying radically inflated prices,. These debts cant be discharged through bankruptcy, you’re just permanently burdened after making a decision. This isn’t “oh well I fucked up” this is “I will be paying this down until the day I die” when you graduate into a society that is hell bent on outsourcing and replacing you. Telling an 18 year old who thought they were doing the right thing, “go fuck… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Mcleod

Eighteen years old is not old enough to held responsible for decisions that will effect the rest of their lives? Horseshit! Every single one of the “kids” in my social circle that piss and moan about their student loans went away to college, when they had a perfectly decent college within commuting distance, to get the “college experience” (adding about $60,000.00 to their loan balance). Every single one of the “kids” in my social circle that piss and moan about their student loans went on some sort of horseshit overseas study for a semester paid for by student loans. Perhaps… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

Not what I said but hey cool man, just don’t whine if the response is “fuck me? No, fuck YOU.”

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7 months ago

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Mcleod

“Telling an 18 year old who thought they were doing the right thing, “go fuck yourself, why weren’t you born during the economic upswing you silly bastard” is a sociopathic thing to say” You are implying two things. One, an eighteen year old is not capable of making the right decision. Two, that the reason they cannot pay back their student loans is because they were not born in an economic upswing. Neither of these are true. In my, admittedly anecdotal but still expansive, experience the young adults with the largest student loan balances had an awfully good time in… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

Anecdote is right, my state didn’t pay shit, most states don’t I believe. Although I do have a cousin who got in on a similar deal in another state, so yes 18 year olds can make the right decision by having their parents live in the right state. My rhetoric aside I understand your position. You’re nearly making the same apex fallacy that most people make about white people, or women about men. College really isn’t a four year party for most of the kids I went to college with or whom I’ve known since. I say nearly, because of… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Mcleod

If they are eighteen they are not kids. If society wants to change the date, I’m game. These kids are going away to college, paying out of state tuition, paying for housing, and paying for food and all the while there is a university 15 min down the road from their house. Hell I have a sister in law that would go on a couple of exotic vacations a year on student loan money for pharmacy school because she worked hard and “deserved it”. I have a niece that went out of state to a “better school” and borrowed for… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Compsci

It’s mostly women receiving the degrees these days (approaching 2/3’s). Men have been castrated and seem not to do much of anything useful after high school, but at least they are not running up the debt these women are.

My suspicion is that feminist inroads or not, women are looking for successful/promising mates at the University, but pickings are slim. And if you are a minority, forget it.

LOL. I get that a lot from the kids. In fact, that’s what my daughter told me when I refused to foot the bill for her ‘education’ in fine arts. If she still spoke to me she’d say so again if I asked her how that edjyikashun worked out for her. Sorry, but Walsh remains correct. If you fell for the education scam any time within the last 15 years… that’s on you. Any rational adult, young or old – can see that scam for what it is. The real problem is this: what do we do with all our… Read more »

And did anyone at the colleges they applied to tell them that what they were doing was a bad idea? Zman’s post is that you don’t have a high trust society if you can’t trust someone to say, against their own interest, this is not a good idea for you. A low trust society says, “Screw you, I’m going to take you for all you’re worth.” Meanwhile, you are saying “Good for them taking advantage of the rubes.”

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7 months ago

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Mcleod

When would you allow agency? Currently we give agency at 18. When would you like to set the date? I’m not apposed to adjusting age when people can sign a contract and act independently. No vote and no military service before that date though. We aren’t slaves. We don’t need the master to tell us what we can and can’t do. Are these Universities committing fraud? If they are committing fraud then bring the hammer down on them not the taxpayers.

In reality we allow agency in stages. You don’t get to drive until you are 15/16 years old. You get to vote and other things at 18. Alcohol isn’t allowed until 21. Often you can’t rent a hotel room until that age as well. Unless it is through a company, you can’t rent a car until you are 24. Even the Constitution has age requirements. Let’s admit that there isn’t some magical age where you get it all at once. Next, this isn’t about slavery. It’s about legally scamming people. Someone could probably come up with an idea that would… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Ursula

The fact that we have a society that finds it acceptable for banks and schools, with our government’s assistance, to so blatantly screw our people shows that we no longer live in a high-trust Christian society. Rather, it’s quite Talmudic — materialistic, degenerate with a popular culture that comes straight out of the black ghetto. American Christians of European stock from over 100 years ago would find what we tolerate today to be abominably intolerable and disgracefully barbaric. The spirit of our country is boldly Judaic today, which was budding even back when de Tocqueville was observing American mores. The… Read more »

And the end result of such a society is complete splintering as you can only trust your family. Everyone else is fair game for whatever scam you can get them to agree to.

It’s astounding that these guys will read the Z man’s writings, his essay today on this very subject, and yet act and reply as if they did not read it at all.

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7 months ago

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Badthinker

Basically how China, India, and Africa operate daily.

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7 months ago

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A.B. Prosper

This is how much of Southern and Eastern Europe work and how all of Europe worked before Christianity.

Back to our roots I guess.

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7 months ago

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BadThinker

Extra-familial fear is pretty much the state of nature. Christianity has led to extra-familial trust after many centuries. I would argue that the reason Southern/Eastern Europe still have the lack of that trust is the history of Turkish/Arabic rule in Spain & the Balkans, and the Mongol destruction of much of Eastern Europe. Northwestern Europe was (relatively) safe so Christianity was able to do its slow, patient work for nearly twice the time that south/east europe has had, guiding the evolution of the peoples. Here’s the thing – if my neighbor is no longer a Christian, how do I know… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Hoyas, actually, loan forgiveness is a given. The bubble is just too large. The debt too crushing for the economy. It will undoubtedly come under another guise to mask the giveaway, but it is inevitable. Anyone want to know the historical basis need only research the ancient practice of Jubilee and the rationale. If the ancients figured this out, we will as well. What we need to stop now is the pernicious concept of free University for all. Such a continuing waste of resources is unsustainable.

Yes and no. Yes, there is nothing wrong with people paying for their mistakes. However, show me one other type of loan an average 18 year old can take out that over a four year period will run into six figures? They can’t even get a rental car at that age. This isn’t a 10K loan for a car and boy was that a mistake. A mistake that only hounds you for a handful of years. This is an irrevocable decision that is inescapable.

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7 months ago

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Nunnya Bidnez, jr.

Follow the money. where has it all gone, the money borrowed by students, guaranteed by the government? To the colleges of course. But don’t colleges have huge endowments, literally hundreds of billions stashed away? Aren’t they the landlords of some of the most expensive real estate around? I know NYU and Columbia own large swaths of prime income producing real estate in New York; I know all the elite universities have billions of dollars in endowments and trusts. IT IS TIME TO CLAW BACK THAT MONEY TO PAY OFF THE STUDENT DEBT. No reason for the fleeced students, or scammed… Read more »

“…high-trust societies can only exist in societies with a shared heritage and a shared biology.” Where do you find that now? Lefty is busy dumping POCs in every community. Add to that the brainwashing that goes on in public schools and you have Quislings among us who feel no compunction about joining the “other”. Or at least openly sympathizing with them. Those of us old enough to remember with fondness the Eisenhower years are now faced with a generation who have no feeling for the struggles of their ancestors, who can’t even tell you where Yorktown is or its significance.… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Apex Predator

“, who can’t even tell you where Yorktown is or its significance.” I LOL’d at this. I feel like a broken record but it bears repeating. I think this phenomenon is because the main demographic here skew way older than middle-aged (Boomerish or close I presume). So you probably don’t have good exposure to millenials and Gen Z on a daily basis. Yorktown, really? Try ‘Revolutionary War’. They don’t know what it is, who it involved, in what century it occurred, or why. Furthermore, they don’t give a whit that they don’t know and are quite proud of this ignorance.… Read more »

There is also this famous quotation: “That which you do not know, you cannot love. That which you do not love, you will never fight for.”

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7 months ago

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Al from da Nort

A weighty post Z Man; Yes indeed we need to openly debate the degree to which a society can tolerate obvious stupidity in the name of individual freedom. Under the evil patriarchy there were numerous laws to protect the weak-minded and those with little power: Usury laws, gambling prohibitions, anti-drug laws, alimony laws, sexual degeneracy as a crime laws, etc. These laws were considered unjust and hard-hearted. The remaining residue of these laws are still being swept away, now without any limit of wisdom, by soft-headed, emotive gynarchy and licentious libertarianism. As you say, the results suck. But you seem… Read more »

The academy has become this giant self-licking ice cream cone. The government provides Pell Grants and loans, which are free money to these universities. It allows them to fund useless womyns and racial studies programs that act as virtue signalling for adminstrators. The shame of it is that many people get these pointless degrees, saddled with massive debt. The universities can raise tuition endlessly because there is so much free money flowing into the system. When I was playing basketball at Directional Commuter School that has one win in the NCAA Tournament, I was getting my tuition, room and board… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Compsci

There are two types of jobs I *won’t* do. Those I physically can’t do and those that pay less than another job I have a choice to do. I believe most others here ascribe to the above as well. Rarely (if ever) have I discussed the issue of lack of applications for a position without quickly getting to the real root of the problem, which is lack of wages to entice applications (or the precessor, lack of people with skill/education in the field to recruit from).

My family lives in a exurban subdivision of $350k homes on large 2-acre lots. There are doctors, lawyers and accountants, but there are plenty of business owners in the blue collar trades. My next door neighbor owns a plumbing company and he’s told me a million times how he can’t talk kids into becoming apprentices making $25 an hour. He says kids are afraid of getting their hands dirty. BTW, he’s multi-millionaire and has a collection of classic cars that would make most motorheads drool. It’s no wonder that his five sons are all plumbers. At least some kids were… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Tykebomb

I’d feel better about student loan forgiveness if it wasn’t a massive reset button. For decades, the Ivory Tower Guild has been able to run up prices and create immense country clubs on the most valuable land in the country. They’ve done it by lying and cheating generations of new adults. And yet, by forgiving the loans, they’ll just do it all over again. Any bill to forgive student loans that doesnt punish the colleges severely and destroys their entire system of credentialing is morally unacceptable. The Professors, Administrators, and Leadership may have to burn. Otherwise, the next cycle will… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Mcleod

Sell off the universities assets to pay off the student loans including pension plans. The ultimate clawback. That is an idea I can get behind.

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7 months ago

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alzaebo

McLeod, they are the kakistocrats whose tax evasion has funded their political scheme of ‘pull up the drawbridge’. “Attack the capitalist kulaks!”, they cry.
Let us certainly give them a taste of their own foul medicine.

Uni has become a racket to sell lemon loans and Party dependency. Forcing them to buy back their ill-gotten gains with their own profit is true social justice!

The illegal bankruptcy prohibition is yet another oligarch scheme to protect themselves. Return risk to these government backed loan scams, and damn those Bush fraudsters to hell. “Education president ” my ass.

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Tykebomb, destroying the institution/credentialing? Perhaps I’m not reading/understanding your intent, but…why not? First, there are way too many people in post secondary education known as college/university. We wish to shunt those people off to (presumably) better development paths. In the private sector, when product purchase declines, factories close. The efficient factories remain to handle the reduced demand. There is no way around it. Second, credentialing has already declined with the spread of phony degrees offered to low level ability students where the only ability shown is to show up for class and pay outrageous tuition. Tell me what good is… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Educated.Redneck

This response from CompSci is supremely emblematic of the failure of foresight that is the BoomerCon. You are the Pompeiian property developer, endlessly fascinated by your investment property’s ROI and your search to buy a new RV, while stubbornly refusing to pay attention to that distracting rumbling from Vesuvius. “What use does my company have for doom-sayers talking about volcanoes!? I’m shopping for a new Harley! Get off my lawn that I paid 1/20th the the current market value for!” screeches the BoomerCon. “What good is it to have learned professors teach the next generation about how the musicians of… Read more »

While most people do empathize with the former students under a heavy debt load, at least some part of most of us says, “What kind of an idiot gets a degree in an unmarketable major, then is surprised they can’t find a job?” I’d be willing to see a program where: – 1/3 of the debt is charged back to the college/university that person attended. They had some responsibility to explain that, no, Intersectionality Studies is not a major that would ever result in a job better than they could have had with a high school diploma. – 1/3 picked… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Saml Adams

Your math is a little off, but have always liked the idea of the institution effectively underwriting a portion of the loan and taking the hit if the loan fails.

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Linda, you can’t require pay off of loan before grad school. Won’t work for several reasons.

One, grad school needs to come fairly soon after BA/BS or you lose momentum (best receptive years for knowledge acquisition). After 25, it’s downhill from an HBD/IQ standpoint.

Second, you don’t necessarily need to borrow money for such education. A good student can be admitted with a stipend or position that pays tuition and living expenses. This is pretty much the rule with MD’s for example in their residencies.

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7 months ago

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UpYours

Congrats: You win the dumbest and the most retarded argument with the 25 limit. Many of my peers are above 25, and have no problem learning complex mathematical/ML concepts in new fields to stay relevant. People like Einstein, Feynman, Tesla and Darwin continued working well after 50.

The interesting thing about making everything about self-interest is that somehow Conservative, Inc. thinks it will stop where they think it will stop. Get into a debate about drug prices and you’ll hear the competition will solve it all slogans. Point out that, for instance, the Epi-Pen manufacturer has snuffed out competition via regulatory shenanigans, and the only reply will be the gov’t needs to get out of healthcare slogan. Self-interest means working the gov’t as well as anything else to gain advantage. Yet, they do not want to recognize that.

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7 months ago

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Saml Adams

I’ve worked for large financial institutions for decades. We love regulatory capture. While not on the banking side, many of my clients were banks. The large ones loved Dodd-Frank (protestations aside). They could afford all the compliance officers and systems. The community bank, not so much.

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7 months ago

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RestEasy

I guess I don’t get it. School debt? Empathy for victims of predatory sexual deviants. Yes. And horror and dread. For the apathy evidenced after 45 years of abortions. Here and abroad. Most recently celebrated in New York. Anyways. So you will excuse me if the imminence of God’s wrath upon this nation is not mustering up much empathy for children that just must attend university at exorbitant prices. Rugged individuals vs. sociopaths. That is what the conflict is shaping up to be. And they tend to organize better. Gentlemen. You want to be left alone. Understandable. You want to… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

Missing the point man, it’s not either or it’s both and. Obviously abortion and apostasy is worse, no kidding. But telling our youngest generation of countrymen that usurious loans and being forced out of affording marriage and a home life is their own damn fault and they need to buck up and makes bricks without straw is callous. They didn’t just “have to go to college” it’s what everyone told them to do from ages 5-18. It’s not just liberal arts majors getting shanked by this either.

Zman wrote: “What that tweet reveals is that Official Conservatism™ thinks it is perfectly fine for sophisticated parties to prey on unsophisticated parties.” This has been a complaint and source of anger of mine for many years. It applies to people, as Zman does, but it also applies to the systems that those sophisticated parties erect, in order to gain advantage over the unsophisticated. IOW, these sorts of sociopaths increase a system’s complexity to the point that average or less-sophisticated folks can not jump through all the hoops to grasp the brass ring. An example of this is the byzantine… Read more »

This is why the “bipartisan” (official conservative/elite liberal) efforts to “improve” Social Security and Medicare are so enraging. These are good programs supported by vast majorities and for sound reasons: they work, and they work for real people, not sophisticated game players. The so called “Ponzi Scheme” of Social Security is in fact an intergenerational compact perfectly in line with a High Trust, Western society. There are funding issues, of course, easily solved by for example by including more/different income in the Social Security base and allowing Medicare to aggressively negotiate drug prices. But the beauty of these programs is… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Saml Adams

Most things that matter run on trust. Quite a few years ago, got toned out to fire just as I was pulling into my driveway. It was a pretty good one in a very large single family dwelling. Took about about half of it and we had pretty close call on the third floor with a near flashover. Afterwards, once we finished up overhaul and structural assessment, took the owner (who I knew) through to retrieve some belongings before we secured it. He asked me “why do you volunteer to do this?”. Asked him back, “where would we be if… Read more »

You cannot have a nationalistic country and have a universalist church like the Roman Catholic Church preaching inclusion. My Aunts live in my small midwestern town. They were and are the quintessential church ladies. They are also retired liberal school teachers. They put their souls into their local parish, only to see it taken over by the Mexicans they welcomed into their community. Now they have a Mexican priest who barely speaks English and they drive 20 mins to another more Irish and German parish. The Church looks at all of us the same way the other elite institutions do,… Read more »

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7 months ago

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ConservativeFred

Something similar happened to my aunt and uncle. They lived in a city that had a test program for school vouchers, which of course went to the poor and immigrant communities. Their local Catholic School became 50% vibrant in short order. A few “unforeseen” consequences: 1. The school had been small and struggling, and welcomed the new found cash. 2. The school administrators favored voucher students because they did not require scholarships and discounts as middle class parish members often required. 3. Vibrant communities do not volunteer, and in fairness, had no real connection to the school or parish. 4.… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Fred, right on. For those folk wondering if Fred’s case is an exception, read Charles Murry’s, “Coming Apart”. Over a decade old, but mentions such breakdown of social trust, and community decline—even within race.

The vibrants came in on vouchers and almost immediately there were complaints of racism. Plus, as you said, they couldn’t even be bothered to volunteer. I stated that it would be far better to dump the voucher kids, drastically downsize, and rebuild. Instead, they have continuously bled out from losing their core families.

Our parish school does a couple things differently. First, everyone learn Latin. The entire program is set up to teach Western, Christian history & values. There is a self-selection process that helps out quite a bit.

Next, we have a significant fundraising event, a significant part of which is used to provide scholarships for OUR kids. Kids from our parish, whom we know. It can be done, but it takes work.

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7 months ago

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Al from da Nort

Alt; This is a sad and all-too typical tale. *And* I’d bet your aunts played their own small or not-so-small parts in it. How, you ask_? If anyone, likely male, had dared to ask while the Mexicans were being welcomed, “Hey, what’s going to happen when there gets be a lot of Mexicans and they take over_?”, I bet your aunts would have shamed and silenced him. “Raaaysisss; *That’s not who we are*_!”, they likely said. And, being teachers, they were very likely thought leaders in the Parrish. No insult is intended to your aunts personally. I hope I’m wrong,… Read more »

That is a recent innovation. Not very long ago, the Germans had their neighborhoods with German parishes; so did the Poles and the Irish and the Italians. And, no, they did view themselves as interchangeable.

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7 months ago

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Maus

Well, I am uncertain what to do with the observation that I am a sociopath because I have no empathy for the stupid or those who wallow in their own ignorance. I suppose I am more of a neoreactionary than a conservative. I was taught as a young boy, and life has confirmed the lesson, that you cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The sad fact is that a majority of those entering post-secondary education, whether on borrowed money or not, are not worthy of the opportunity because of their place on the intelligence bell curve.… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Saml Adams

Maybe I have a broader definition of empathy. I’d see sitting a kid down who is going to do much better in a skilled trade than getting some useless degree and having a frank talk about that as “empathy”. You’ve made more effort to understand him/her than the mindless bot that sends him/her off to go into debt and get a useless degree.

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7 months ago

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Educated.Redneck

So here’s the flipnside: are the kids (literal kids 17-18 y/o) signing up for student debt the only party to blame? Are the banksters and college administrators without fault when they’re making billions off of to these teenagers who are too young to buy a beer or a handgun and have no way out except decades of being debt slaves? Does that have no deleterious knock-on effects, such as decreasing heritage fertility, and creating legions of chronically underemployed who then agitate for dangerous political solutions to their unsolvable problems? Then the point of comparison here Is Harvey Weinstein: are you… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Saml Adams

One of my kids attends a college where every student has a full ride academic scholarship. It only offers a single dual degree program. The catch is you have to take the exact same courses, in the same order and pass every one to remain in school. Fail one and you are out. It was originally endowed by the founder for that purpose…but is now self sustaining since 100% of the graduates are employed, at one of the highest average salaries among all schools and 90% of alums donate back.

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7 months ago

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Drake

Webb?

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7 months ago

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Saml Adams

That’s a “bingo”.

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7 months ago

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Drake

Heard great things about it.

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7 months ago

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Doodle Dandy

I looked at Webb’s website, and it looks fantastic. I have 4 sons–a few of them will definitely be interested in applying when the time comes. Thanks for the head’s up!

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7 months ago

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Nunnya Bidnez, jr.

back in the day, the only other schools for that subject area were MIT, Ann Arbor, and IIRC Berkeley. I regret not going (I got into Ann Arbor), because as Wharf Rat says, there’s nothing like messing about in boats.

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7 months ago

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Saml Adams

Now the whole supply pretty much comes from two schools…hence the scarcity. But it is an interesting model, pretty much self sustaining. Mitch Daniels is also doing some interesting things at Purdue.

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7 months ago

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Kendoka

Not quite. The US Naval Academy has offered degrees in Naval Architecture since the 1960s and courses in the same subject since its founding in 1845.

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7 months ago

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Saml Adams

Most of their education is focused on ship handling, power and weapons systems. Webb is the only program that grants duel BS degrees in Architecture and Marine Engineering as the standard offering.

Please. Pick up a history book. You may recall something called The Thirty Years War. How about the Sack of Rome in 1527? And our own Civil War was no picnic. Christians killing Christians is part and parcel of our heritage. Something else is going on today, and as much as I would like to believe Jesus could save us, we are going to have to save ourselves with or without Him.

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7 months ago

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Compsci

Epaminondas, well said. Not sure a Civil War of Christians against Christians can occur as I’m not sure either side will recognize the other as “Christian”. 🙁 But I am sure that neither side will prevail without Him. 🙂

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7 months ago

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ConservativeFred

I have mixed feelings on the pending student loan crisis. If you went through college on loans 10-20 years ago, there was little data or information on job prospects, salaries, quality of life. You also had almost every teacher, parent, administrator telling you, “you have to go to college to succeed.” Even now, there is a lot of pressure to go to college. I have a lot of sympathy for people in their 30’s and 40’s struggling with student loan debt. Post-financial crisis, the data is there for people to see before taking on student loans. I have less sympathy… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Guest

Much of the student loan problem could be resolved by simply restoring the dischargeability of student loan debt in bankruptcy. Lender discipline has degraded significantly since the dischargeability of student loans was eliminated in the late ’90s. My cold heart would shine if Congress were to pull the rug out from under the banks on this one.

True, but discharging student loan debt in bankruptcy is highly questionable, which is why the lobbyists who wrote the law excluding such debt from discharge had an easy job getting it through. The problem is, upon graduation, virtually all students with loans have way more liabilities than assets. Without special treatment for their student debt they would qualify for bankruptcy. So the rational thing to do would be to file for bankruptcy right away and start clean. Universities could just hand out the paperwork for a bankruptcy filing with the diplomas! If we’re going to have student loans of any… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Guest

With respect, the lobbyists had an easy time getting it through because banking interests paid off Congress. It really was that simple. Yes, there were some high-profile cases of med students and law students declaring bankruptcy immediately following graduation to discharge their student loans (believe me, I considered it), but in the big picture the number of bankruptcy defaults was insignificant. I believe that a bankruptcy filing stayed on your credit record for 7 years back then; now it’s 10 years. That’s a pretty hefty penalty, but if it’s not enough there’s no reason that Congress could not change the… Read more »

Walsh is a prime example of someone that has a platform that exceeded their talent. I used to read him when he had a little blog and posted stuff on social media but he has been given a much, much larger social media platform and he thinks it has made him more insightful than he actually is. Now he usually comes of as an insufferable twit that thinks getting lots of clicks means what he is saying is really profound.

While I can understand the exasperation many here express about ostensibly “useless” or “unmarketable” degrees like folklore and sociology, the real problem is simply a failure to make pertinent distinctions. The other big problem is the way these things are taught (which is to say, in reality, they’re barely taught at all); not only is academia almost entirely converged Left, it’s converged hard-line, psycho, dream-world, schizophrenic left. Incompetence, imaginary bitterness, and dream-state denial of reality are the teaching style. Lots of humanities degrees can be “useful” and marketable if taught properly and in the correct context. Certain humanities topics should… Read more »

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7 months ago

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DrDog

Disclosure: I work in the belly of the ED complex. “That’s why people with a soul should look at the student debt problem with sympathy and horror. It’s not just that these kids are saddled with debt. It’s that they and their parents are being preyed upon by sophisticated parties, with the aid and protection of the state.” Only partially true. The first rule of nearly anything — ‘Know thy Self’. Know your abilities and your disabilities. Especially when it comes to any form of debt. If you know you can’t cut it as a STEM graduate don’t pursue it.… Read more »

it’s not just the parents that thinks they’re offspring is going to be the next Jobs or Buffett it’s the offspring itself. They’ll think they’re geniuses. They’ve been told all their lives how special and unique there are so of course they believe that’s true. My cure for it is read biographies of anyone that was ever described as a polymath. It gives you humility. Sometimes I think I’m a genius and then I read about real geniuses and it puts me back in my place.

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7 months ago

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Abelard Lindsey

The thing I don’t get about the student loan debacle is why so many young people get degrees in utterly stupid subjects. For example, one of the Buzzfeed layoffs brags (yes, brags!) about having a doctorate in romantic comedies (I’m not making this up). Do these kids really think that is the magic ticket to success? When I was in college (in the 80’s) it was generally understood you majored in a subject that related to whatever career or field you plan to go into. People pursued degrees like business or mechanical engineering, pre-law or pre-med, stuff like that. There… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

It’s kind of the apex fallacy, yes some kids are studying stuff that is dumber than can be imagined. It really isn’t most. The liberal arts in general and business school, unless you’re in very, very well ranked school are basically considered by basket weaving by HR. STEM isn’t a panacea either. Everyone says “snowflake millenials”, but this “snowflake” generation consists of both antifa psychos and young men and women currently fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Young folks today really aren’t terrible. Their elders just don’t care what happens to them. It’s the narrative pushed by right and left, that… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Abelard Lindsey

One explanation I came up with is that many young people simply do not have any “grown ups” around who can give them good advice (about college and what to major in). As you say, kids are all over the map, just like previous generations. The leftist “snowflakes” may be just a minority making a lot of noise on the internet.

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7 months ago

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Hoyos

That’s probably the most accurate appraisal, good advice is really hard to come by, a lot of advice I received was good advice for the previous generation, and some of it was good advice, just poorly sold or explained. It’s like people are allergic to “why”.

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7 months ago

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alzaebo

But it is the ticket! ‘Useless’ degrees demonstrate loyalty to the clerisy. They are the feminist version of political science degrees, a shot at an Institutional job.

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7 months ago

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Brad

Both my parents are college grads (Father an Electrical Engineer and Mom a Teacher). They grew up believing you had to have a degree to get a good job. This was a commonly spoken belief, even 10-15 years ago. I started college in 2006 (grad 2010) and at that time student loans were being passed out like candy. Private colleges were especially predatory, being fully staffed with sales teams and recruiters who made a lot of dubious promises. Infamous one-liners: “91% of our college grads work in their field of study and 84% are making 6 figure incomes within their… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Ursula

“The West has yet to experience a Communist invasion; religion here remains free. But the West’s own historical evolution has been such that today it too is experiencing a drying up of religious consciousness. It too has witnessed racking schisms, bloody religious wars, and rancor, to say nothing of the tide of secularism that, from the late Middle Ages onward, has progressively inundated the West. This gradual sapping of strength from within is a threat to faith that is perhaps even more dangerous than any attempt to assault religion violently from without. “Imperceptibly, through decades of gradual erosion, the meaning… Read more »

This the first post of yours in a very long while that I utterly disagree with. To begin with your starting hypothetical sentence is exactly right – nobody forced Hollywood slatterns onto the casting couch. Each and every one of them could find a good job elsewhere. They wanted it and they got what they wanted. Second your analogy with pederasty is non sensical. We do not allow children to vote and enter contracts precisely because they are weak and vulnerable. On the other hand we do grant 18 years old right to vote, buy guns or sign contracts. You… Read more »

Look, everyone knows the women on Weinstein’s couch were complicit in their own betrayal, but that’s what makes it tragic. Or should, if you had any sense. The entire point of morals and laws and customs is so that the strong do not prey on the weak. They come from the idea that the weak are also part of our tribe & deserve protection.

To say otherwise is simply to accept the globohomo concept.

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7 months ago

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Marvin

There was no “betrayal”. These women had no virtue and nothing to betray. It isn’t tragic – it is comical.
Absolutely every society on earth, now and in the past, including Muslims, Mongols, Moloch worshippers, cannibals and globohomo agreed that strong should not prey on the “weak”. Claiming this as foundation of western civilization is disingenuous. The question is who are the weak.

Not sure why you think I said it was specifically Western civilization- I referred to moral and laws.

Still, your view can be read to say that there is never anything wrong with taking advantage of a person who wants to be taken advantage of, or demeaning a person who wants to be demeaned. Such thinking is, what’s the word? sociopathic.

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7 months ago

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Al from da Nort

BTP;
What you say is true in abstract today. But today *the weak are in charge*. Or they are allowed by the Cloud Folk to think they are.

Those who were in need of protection were not in charge under the old evil Patriarchy. That’s why thy whined and moaned about the unfairness of it all. So now we are where we are.

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7 months ago

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Dtbb

They hired the money didn’t they. A lot of student loan debt is a scam to defraud.

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7 months ago

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Tax Slave

Come the Second Revolution (it will not be a civil war—the vanquished will have no geographic location to retreat to—it will resemble the French Revolution with much blood) can we write into the new Bill of Rights guaranteed Freedom of Association?

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7 months ago

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Dukeboy01

Like all problems, there is some truth to each of the positions. 1. Yes, some kids go to college and major in stupid things with little hope of a real career. Any debt they are taking on is foolish. 2. However, even if the kid goes to college and majors in something useful, the student loan industrial complex and the university system will still conspire and work overtime to saddle him/ her with unnecessary debt. Young and unsophisticated citizens are being ganged up on and taken advantage of. The only question is to what degree will they have a chance… Read more »

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7 months ago

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TomA

University students have been seduced into taking on gargantuan debt so that Leftist politicians can buy their votes by promising future debt reduction or forgiveness. These students are conned into believing they won’t really have to ever pay it back, but Leftists gain a reliable voting block for as long as the charade holds. Empathy for their plight is fine, but a better way to help is to educate them on out how they’ve been duped and who got them hooked. Pity is a form of empathy, but these debt slaves would be better served by a healthy dose of… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Aod

Reminds me of something I read on East Germany before The Wall came down. People didn’t know who they could or couldn’t trust so they simply recoiled back into their immediate family circles. As a result not much went on in the ol’ DDR and was likely a very boring place to live. After the fact the Stasi offices were raided and people discovered loads of files on who had informed on whom and apparently this further broke down what little trust remained.

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7 months ago

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JR Wirth

The horror show that is student debt is that it’s not dischargeable in bankruptcy unless you’ve become an invalid.

As it stands now they’re saddled with this debt for life, due to big education and big government working hand in glove.

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7 months ago

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alzaebo

How do you plan to address the shortage of baristas, then?

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7 months ago

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Remsdad

When you borrow funds you are expected to repay them with interest. This is what good, honest people do.

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7 months ago

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sirlancelot

Liberals pushed the idea that you were just some ignorant rube without a college education. A lot of guys bought it. Work some overtime, send your kid to school so they wouldn’t have to work the docks. Trouble was they just weren’t college material. They made movies like ” Animal House ” for a reason. The local state university UMass aka Zoo Mass was notorious as party central. To the point they gave the campus cops jurisdiction over the off-campus housing. The weekend Booze Fest was legendary. So, yeah complete waste of money ! And no, as a taxpayer not… Read more »

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7 months ago

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Glenn

I used to read Matt Walsh and after a while I just couldn’t take reading him any more. It may be missing the point to say that Walsh is only parroting the Conservative Inc line (that may be true as well). As far as I can tell Matt Walsh is a dyed in the wool Calvinist. Calvinism has a just reputation as being harsh and even cruel. I’m a Christian but I can’t swallow much of Calvinism. Here are a couple of quotes from John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: “The misery which they suffer in time, and the… Read more »